Navigating High-Powered Career and Family Life: Logan Mallory's Journey with Reprogramming Success

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Emotional man Weekly podcast. I am really excited to have Logan Mallory here with us. He is the VP of marketing and modellosity. He's married, he has four kids they just tend through four and he is a huge Marvel fan. You can find him on opening night watching the Marvel movies with his friends. He's also not a lot of people may know this about him, but he's the 26th best polevolter in the state of Michigan.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Once upon a time.

Speaker 1: 0:45

Yes, he just said 125 workouts, crotty kid you can find crotty kid on his vision board. We're just really excited to talk with Logan and really explore some of the challenges he's faced being a business leader and a family man. Welcome to the show, logan.

Speaker 2: 1:00

I appreciate it. I'm glad to be here and excited to talk today. I just didn't want anyone to think I was out actively pole vaulting and pole students in pole vault right now. Those were my glory days.

Speaker 1: 1:14

What was your greatest height on the bar?

Speaker 2: 1:17

I don't remember. It's probably not worth saying in a podcast. I can't remember if it's 12, 3 or 12, 6. Isn't good enough to get you out of high school pole vaulting?

Speaker 1: 1:26

Awesome, we'll talk to us about modellosity. What is modellosity? What is your role in modellosity? Maybe just give us a quick sketch of your career up to this point.

Speaker 2: 1:36

Yeah, absolutely. Modellosity is an employee experience platform. We help companies create winning cultures. The trick with that is that employee experience means different things to different people and different companies. Modellosity really focuses on the moments where people say do I love my job, do I want to stay here and keep working, or is it time for me to quit and go find something else? Most of the time, share your paycheck matters, but that really revolves around do you feel like you're a part of the community, do you have a meaningful relationship with your boss, are you being recognized for the work you're doing and do you feel heard? And modellosity has been a great place to be.

Speaker 2: 2:16

I've spent my last three years working here. I was employee probably number 25 and now there's about 70 of us. It's a really powerful place to spend this part of my career. I actually started out in sales my whole life. Everyone said to me Logan, you would be so amazing at sales and what they really meant was Logan, you're nice and you can talk to people. So I started in sales and spent a few years in Texas and a little bit in Seattle, and then I just realized that wasn't for me, and I got really fortunate and was able to shift into marketing and have spent the majority of the last 15 years in tech B2B marketing, and it's been a great career for me that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 3:01

That's amazing it's having those two little moments when you recognize that what you're doing is really aligned with what you feel passionate about. Those are really key inflection points. No, so you're doing all this? Were you doing this with a family? When were you married? We know that you have four kids. Yeah, so talk to me about the Come to your Family journey.

Speaker 2: 3:20

Our family journey started out rough. Emily and I tried for years to have kids and just never worked, and so eventually we went down the infertility and in vitro path and had our twins. The twins were nine months old when we found out that nature had worked and we had one coming. So we ended up with three kids under 18 months old, and that was, frankly, a brutal time of life. I did that, I was doing, I was working and switched jobs and did my executive MBA. Those three kids were between about 18 months and three years, and we waited a little bit, gave ourselves a break and had our four. So I feel like my 30s, though they have been great. I've also had a lot of struggle and a lot of work trying to push this career and be successful, but not at the expense of my family. I don't think I've always gotten it right, but I've tried.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Now let's dive into that. First off, maybe explore the times where you didn't think you got it right. Where you didn't think you were getting it right, and why is it you didn't think you were getting it right?

Speaker 2: 4:31

Yeah, listen, I'm a believer in cycles and ebbs and flows and you might get things right for a minute, but then your cycles change or your interactions with others change, and those changes create new opportunities for the ups and the downs. Let me give you an example. I always wanted to teach. I would have loved to have been a teacher, a high school teacher but I wanted more money than that and I did my MBA, partly so that I could go teach at the university level. So I've, for six years I've been an adjunct professor at the Marriott School of Business for Brigham Young University and taught marketing and strategy courses there, and that filled this need that I had to teach and help others. It was great and I loved it.

Speaker 2: 5:19

And about when I moved over to Motivosity three years ago, that was my first time kind of being in an executive role and I had some responsibilities at church. I had four kids, including a baby I was trying to raise. I was learning how to be an executive and I was teaching morning classes at Brigham Young University and I was speaking at events Like I was going nonstop and that came at the expense of my family and, frankly, my like emotional and mental well-being and I just had to look around and say what can I drop, what can I set aside? And teaching was what I could put aside. Like I couldn't stop my job, I couldn't get rid of my kids, I was unwilling to not serve in my religious congregation and so teaching even though it was my hobby and something I loved, I needed to set it aside. And I immediately noticed an improvement, like right away, by having fewer plates to spin. I was a healthier executive and a healthier dad and husband.

Speaker 1: 6:22

How did you recognize that things were going well in terms of health? I think it's so often we can get so caught up in kind of the pursuit Sometimes we become blind that we think, oh, it's just a spell, we'll get better, I'll just manage XYZ.

Speaker 2: 6:39

Yeah, like this is pretty vulnerable and I don't know if I'd shared the story in a podcast or live. I was in a boat with my wife's family and my niece and I was helping my niece learn to surf behind the boat. It was her first time and I had surfed for a few minutes and then I would try to hold the surfboard for her and she'd get pulled by the boat and I'd swim to her and I got in the boat after I don't know 20 minutes or something of trying to help her and then my body had this really weird response my jaw locked, my fingers locked, my breathing was I don't know of a word other than dangerous, and I thought I was going to die on that boat. I didn't know if it was a heart attack. I didn't know what it was. I told my wife. I literally said goodbye to my wife, thinking like there's no way they get me to the hospital in time for whatever is going on.

Speaker 2: 7:37

And that medical event set me on a path where I knew that I needed to figure out what was going on and I thought it was medical. I thought maybe it was neurological. I thought it was. For a while I thought it was this rare disease called myasthenia gravis, which means weak muscles. And after a few years of like, really exploring, I had a doctor that basically said Logan, you've spent your whole life running on caffeine and adrenaline and that's your body telling you to calm down.

Speaker 2: 8:11

And I didn't realize this and it sounds silly now when I was in the boat, I literally was like okay, this is it. I'm going out on a boat and it was a panic attack. That's what it was. It was a panic attack that basically shut down part of my nervous system and it was just the beginning. And so how do I know, or how did I know, that things were getting better? They didn't for a long time. That's been a long journey for me and it's taken me some time to figure it out. And again, I'm a believer in cycles. Someday things are good and some days they're not, and that doesn't mean you have to panic.

Speaker 1: 8:44

I love that. I love that my wife has autoimmune disorders and she deals with some degree of anxiety, yeah, and some days she's just ready to conquer the world and some days it's just enough to keep the kids alive, and it seems like maybe talking about cycles. We experienced that Just in natural day-to-life cycles, but to some degree, maybe more severe than others. So how did you handle that as an executive and as a father? Because, like you said, you just can't get rid of your children.

Speaker 2: 9:18

Yeah, I think I put on a really good show at work. I think I saved it all for after work, unfortunately, and so I don't say that bragging. I just think I was fortunate enough. And again, I think in all of my mental health I still am really fortunate and very functioning. I can look back to high school and now I can realize it was depression. Then I didn't know what it was, I just thought I was lonely and I was a student body president and in my mind I had convinced myself I didn't have any friends. And that's not true, it was just I didn't know what a mental health disorder was at the time. And so I think I've been always fortunate to be able to function, and when I'm in public I can flip a switch, whether that's good or not. We could have another podcast episode about that, but that's my reality. I think I just was really short at home. The best way to describe it is I just got to a 10 really fast when I shouldn't.

Speaker 2: 10:17

And again, as I've worked through therapy, the idea of cycles is really important. I've talked about up and down cycles, but the concept of I have cycles with people, my kids do something and I, like Pavlov's dog. I get conditioned to that and then I have a response and every time they do that, I have a response and they have a response to my response and we create these cycles. And so one of the things, one of the skills that I have learned in the last three to four years of hitting my out of pocket maximum through mental health investments, is that you can change those cycles with other people by slowing down and realizing it's a cycle. If I can stop and be mindful for just a minute to say, ah, that's my trigger, and instead of getting mad or angry or shutting down or retreating, I can slow down and say, hey, you did this and it's causing me to act this way and I want to change that between us. That's gone a long way in my relationships.

Speaker 2: 11:22

I don't always use that language, right, I don't use that language professionally. I don't use that language Doesn't make sense with my kids, but that's been a really big tool. We can talk about that if you want. But the other thing you mentioned in my intro and I feel like it has absolutely leveled me up in 2023, I said I'm going to get healthy and I've made some massive physical changes and that has also been, I would say, between the exercise and the diet and what I'm consuming, and learning how to slow down when I catch myself in a cycle. Those are two of my three secret weapons.

Speaker 1: 11:59

No diet, exercise in relationships. Those are massive changes, Because growing up, we develop some programming yes, we do, and so learning how to disrupt and rewrite that programming, that's what the self-help industry is built on. Yeah, so talk to me, how have you got about changing that programming? Because it can be just so easy to keep doing what you're doing, except for the section of the pay that's causing. But talk to me, how did you go about growing into that change?

Speaker 2: 12:36

There were a couple of catalysts. Again, this health issue was a catalyst. I don't want to sound like I'm a bad dad, I'm a great dad. I'm awesome. I wasn't being the dad I wanted to be, and I could say the same thing about the husband I wanted to be and I was tired at work, and so those were catalysts for me to change. The therapy made a massive difference. I found a therapist that worked for me and meeting with this person has absolutely given me. Meeting with this person and being vulnerable with that person has opened up doors that I wouldn't consider otherwise.

Speaker 2: 13:10

One time, two events coincided at once my therapist this is weird and I have this fear of bullies and I respond immediately when someone's a bully, like I'm not afraid of them, I just hate them, and so I jump in and immediately try to stop whatever action represents the bullying. And my therapist as I was telling him some stories about how this occurred and I've done it with strangers really like really quick story. I was in an airport and I saw this altercation start. I saw a large, strong man screaming and swearing and threatening violence at this young, what looked like a teenager, and I ran at it. I ran at it to go stop it. And then I realized it wasn't a teenager, it was a guy in his 20s that was saying unbelievable things, first to this other bigger man and who looked like the victim was not the victim. And so in telling that story, my therapist said what were you going to do over there? What were you going to do? Beat the guy up? Like I weigh 160 pounds? He said what were you going to do? Stop the other guy. And we laughed together and he said Logan, you don't have any skills. What would you have done in that situation? And he's developed some skills that could help you in bully situations. And he wasn't saying carry a gun. He wasn't saying develop nunchuck skills. He was saying have an action plan instead of just this jerk reaction, to get involved.

Speaker 2: 14:56

And at the same time, within a week, my wife I was the beginning of the year my wife put a bunch of magazines out on the floor for our kids on a Saturday or on a Sunday afternoon and she said hey, kids, create a vision board, make a vision board with what you want. And I didn't have anything to do. And so I laid down on the floor with the kids and I created a vision board and some of it was about camping, some of it was about continuing my therapy, some of it was about work, and in the very center of that I put a picture of the karate kid in my vision board, and that didn't actually represent karate. That represented being more confident so that when I go into skill or when I go into situations or when I see a bully, I can solve it a healthier way. And so that manifested itself as exercising and I've lost.

Speaker 2: 15:48

What have I lost? I've lost about 30 pounds and turned some of that heaviness into muscle. I've exercised about 125 times between end of January to now. Now I'm a different person physically and my wife and I can both look at that and say it is absolutely. I won't say it fixed the mental health problem, but it took me from one plateau and has moved me up. It just moved me up to a different ring on the ladder.

Speaker 1: 16:17

That's incredible. Thank you for sharing that. How much of the intersection, because you talked about coming home with the burdens of work Not necessarily the burdens of work, maybe the fact that your emotional bandwidth by the time you get home has been reduced.

Speaker 2: 16:32

I think that's fair. I think that's fair.

Speaker 1: 16:36

And I think that's something we all experience of your stay at home, parent, by the time four o'clock in hits, your emotional bandwidth is getting used up. So what have you found has helped you to stay still within that kind of emotional bandwidth, or maybe widen it so that when you're getting home you still have enough juice to be present rational with your family?

Speaker 2: 17:01

What have you found has helped with that. Again, part of it goes back to saying no. I said no to that adjunct role for a few years and I said I can't do it. I have people that reach out to me for consulting and I've just had to say no. And when I say yes, it's got to be. I'm really expensive Like I can't say yes to everything.

Speaker 2: 17:22

I have people that reach out on LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, in fact. I hope your audience will connect with me there. I probably get and excuse a little bit of arrogance, I probably get 30 messages a day asking for my time or my insights or if I'll check out this product. I used to say yes as much as I could and now I say I can't. I say anytime I give to you comes at the expense of my wife and kids and I can't do that, and so a willingness to say no has really helped, and I think that's the best answer I have at the moment. My wife might have something else if she was here with us that she would add, but I think saying no has helped me.

Speaker 1: 18:04

I think it's one that saying no is probably one of the most difficult problems entrepreneurs, business leaders, have. Absolutely. It's saying no, because a lot of times I was discussing this yesterday with another entrepreneur and it's this idea of pursuing financial freedom, generational wealth, and saying no to opportunity sometimes feels like saying no to freedom. Yes, how have you gone around that kind of misconception?

Speaker 2: 18:35

I am in the middle of writing. No, that's not fair to say. I am in the very beginning of writing a book. I'm a professional speaker, I speak a lot and travel across the country, and I'm speaking. I'm working on this exact concept right now. Here's what I've determined.

Speaker 2: 18:54

I have determined that our generation, in particular this late millennials and early Gen Z range, the expectations on us that have been set and that we have set for ourselves, is so astronomically high that it might have become impossible for us to achieve that. I read a stat the other day and I can't cite where it was, but essentially 60% of people said the American dream is unattainable. Now, as I've been wrestling with that idea because I don't want to give up, I want that independence and that success and that wealth. But I've been working on this concept of how can we just redefine success Instead of saying success has to come when I am 60 or when I can travel the world like my parents do, or when I have the same house my parents did. What can success look like today? Honestly, this week, on Saturday, success for Logan Mallory was that I biked 15 miles. It was the exercise. I got to call that a success for the day and it changed my perspective. What if success for the day is that your wife so clearly knows that she's loved and that you love? What if you define that as success?

Speaker 2: 20:19

The concept that I on my LinkedIn profile? You'll see that in my title I talk about being a force for good. The concept I've created for being a force for good is I'm a little better and so are the people around me. I've just decided that's my new freaking definition of success. I'm going to be a force for good and that's my new American dream is that I impact people for the positive. I can do that in lots of ways, but I can do it by observing others and seeing what they're doing. I can do that by being a force for good that is resilient and I bounce back from problems so I can help others bounce back from problems. I can do that by being enthusiastic and helping others get excited. There's a lot of ways that that can manifest itself, but I'm redefining success and that's what this book I'm writing is all about.

Speaker 1: 21:08

It's so easy to get trapped in the pursuit of external metrics. It's almost like sometimes, in the pursuit of success, we're searching for freedom, financial freedom and we become enslaved to the ideal. We lose our freedom. It seems like what you're trying to say here is that the external metrics of success need to be replaced with internal metric. That to some degree. What is the core values, what's most important to you, and are you working on that? Is that kind of aligning what you're saying?

Speaker 2: 21:47

It's exactly that. I think we let society and I think we let ourselves and I think we let the. In fact, it was funny, I was reading the American dream. When we think about the American dream, I think most of the time we think about a solid retirement, a nice house with a picket fence and the promise of a better life. That idea was created in 1931 by a historian and a writer 1931. So 100 years ago.

Speaker 2: 22:16

We're basically defining success the same way. That guy didn't have the internet. He didn't have interest rates like we do. He didn't have social media. He didn't have the industrial revolution. The same way, he didn't have 9-11. All of these things. And we're still trying to define success the same way as someone coined it in 1931. My argument is why can't we redefine that? Why can't the American dream be? I freaking love my wife and my kids. I have a great job that I love going to and I'm happy at, and I make people better. I'm good with that American dream. Now, that doesn't mean money doesn't come Most of the time when you're happy. Clayton Christensen talks about this. And how will you measure your life Most of the time when you're happy and the intrinsic factors are being met and you're living your values and you're happy, then financial success follows. And so me. It doesn't have to be exclusive, but maybe we put the money first, when we should have put the intrinsic focus first, and the money will come at least to a point.

Speaker 1: 23:27

Right, it's almost the concept that success is built internally. Yes, and then just by nature it follows.

Speaker 2: 23:37

You got it. You got it. That's maybe I can tie this together that thought process that I just shared with you. Unhealthy Logan, three years ago, never could have gotten to that Right Like the person that was struggled waking up in the mornings, the person whose mind was racing with all the thing, with the anxiety and all the things I screwed up on or I have to do better on or I'm not solving that dude never would have had the mental capacity to start thinking and reading and saying, yeah, it's stupid. We're still defining success by the definition created in 1931 and I'm going to change it. And so unlocking my mental let's not say solving the puzzle of my mental health has unlocked this opportunity for me to be better in multiple ways at work, at home and in my head.

Speaker 1: 24:31

Let's talk about the difference between unhealthy Logan and healthy Logan. What were some of the core beliefs you feel like influenced the unhealthy behavior and how those core beliefs changed since then?

Speaker 2: 24:42

I don't know. I don't know. That's how I think about it. I think my core beliefs are relatively similar. I think my core beliefs were hidden behind static, and hidden behind noise and mud and fog. I don't think my core beliefs changed. I just don't think I had the capacity to truly act on those core beliefs. I would also like to say, as an asterisk, because I'm listening to my words, I am also not out of this. In no way do I think I have this solved or beat or completely fixed. I just know that I'm better than I was. For me, it is a continuing path, even though I'm in a really healthy spot. I'm not stopping going to therapy. I'm not changing my medication. I still want to work out. There's still lots of things to do. I think that's an important asterisk that I don't see this as solved. Again, the core beliefs were there. The core beliefs didn't change as much as my ability to think about them and act on them, because I wasn't being weighed down by these dumbbells of mental health.

Speaker 2: 25:59

Getting healthy allowed you to think clearer better easier, more clearly and with more intention and with less pressure.

Speaker 1: 26:12

What impact have you seen on your capacity to, For example, coming home? Now it seems like you're saying that your capacity to interrupt cycles has been increased.

Speaker 2: 26:26

For sure, I think, the other things that have changed coming home, my ability to give attention, my ability to play a game with the kids, one of the and this one I feel like I'm going to have to put on my 2024 vision board. But I put a picture of Good Night Moon because I wanted to be better at bedtime with my kids. I don't know how does that manifest itself. I turn on the Alexa, I turn on the music with the Alexa and I dance a little bit crazy and funny and play a little bit.

Speaker 2: 26:57

When my kids don't do the chores that they've been asked to do, I don't feel like I go to a seven or an eight or sometimes a 10 as fast. I feel like I can be more logical and calm in my parenting approach and that's really meaningful. I don't want my kids to think this is. I don't want my kids to have a bad experience, but I also don't want them to walk all over me and my wife, and so it's helped me find the better balance of being this good, kind dad that's also able to be firm and help them learn how to be responsible adults without some of the yelling. That's all there is to it.

Speaker 1: 27:34

So I want to explore. I just wanted to get in a little deeper here, because you said the core values were there, the core beliefs were there. You had static inhibiting your ability to think the way that you want to think. Yeah, I mean, we had these catalysts along the way that let you know. Hey, something needs to change Therapy, medication, exercise, relationships. It seems like at some fundamental level, you came to yourself and you believe that something has to change. Then how did he go about identifying what needed to change and how? Because I feel like we can chase change. We change a lot of different things. Sometimes we think we need to change the environment, sometimes we need to change other people or change ourselves. So how did you find meaningful change?

Speaker 2: 28:30

I think I tackled one thing at a time. I don't think I said I'm going to change all this. In fact, as you were listing that of things that I had changed, it's been a year and a half. I used to drink basically a six pack of Coke a day. The math on that, it's 314 pounds of sugar in Coke alone. I got sick last May and I gave up Coke. I just had a flu or COVID or I don't know what it was. I just gave up Coke.

Speaker 2: 29:01

That one step I think realizing the mental health was an issue unlocked the ability to go to therapy. Changing to therapy unlock the ability to change my cycles. Changing my cycles gave me the ability to stop drinking Coke. Not drinking Coke gave me the ability to exercise. You can't exercise well when you're drinking a six pack of Coke a day. It gave me the ability to exercise. Exercising gave me the ability to X. I don't think it was. I'm going to go tackle all these things and be better. I think one key, a little bit like an escape room one key unlocked a door that led to another room that I had to spend some time in and figure it out. Then I found a key and I got to unlock another one. There will be 60 years worth of rooms and keys for me to figure out and unlock.

Speaker 1: 30:01

Which makes sense that your theme is just I'm a little better today.

Speaker 2: 30:05

That's it. I can be successful today. I found a key. I learned more about a room. I was successful today.

Speaker 1: 30:12

I think this is a great transition to our final topic that we always like to spend some time on these interviews, that is, defining success as a family, as business leaders. We have KPIs, OKRs plenty of metrics to identify the bottom line growth culture in terms of succeeding in our businesses. I think one of the challenging things is defining what success looks like in our families, in relationships.

Speaker 2: 30:40

Yeah, I love that. This is not my quote, but I was at an event the other day or someone was speaking somewhere and they said every time their parents, or every time they left the house, their parents said, don't get anyone pregnant and don't go to jail. That was the bar in their family. We laughed at that. What does success look like in my family? I will admit, I have a dream, and that dream is a I don't know if it's a forest or a farm in Tennessee where my kids take care of a couple animals and we don't really see neighbors very often and there's this quiet isolation and a nice front porch to read books on. So I have that dream and it might not ever happen. And so what would my wife and I define success?

Speaker 2: 31:28

As I think we have some spiritual goals for our children right, and how they live their spiritual lives and rallying around Jesus Christ and a savior that redeems them, we realize that our kids get to make their own choices, and we have four kids. The odds of us batting a thousand isn't very high, and so what I've tried to set my sights on as a family is that Malories don't quit and Malories lift other people up. That, to me is a win. The other day my four year old she's a cute little thing and she'll get ready for preschool and for a year and a half now she's been saying dad, do I look cute? And I say you do look cute. What's more important than cute? And we've done this routine enough times that she now knows the answer. And she says being nice and being kind. And if I can get my four kids to live by that with my wife and if we can keep this family unit around that theme, I think the Malories will have succeeded.

Speaker 1: 32:30

I love that. Love that, the finding success by the values you live.

Speaker 2: 32:36

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 32:37

Hi everyone. This has been Logan Malory, vp of Marketing at Motivosity. Logan, if other people want to be one of those 30 people that contact you on LinkedIn, what's the best way they can connect with you? How can they get more of you?

Speaker 2: 32:53

Yeah, I appreciate that opportunity to talk about me a little bit Again. I'm in the process of writing this book, which is a big part of my professional speaking efforts, and if people are looking for professional speakers to come and inspire and help lift their organization, I hope they'd reach out. The very best way to find me at the moment is on LinkedIn. I'm really easy to find. If you search for Logan Malory and Marketing, I will show up and I'll have a goofy smile and a hat on in my picture and I do hope people reach out, because, sure, if you're looking for somebody to speak, I'd love to be the guy to do it, but it's a small world and we need all the friends we can get. And if I can be a resource and I might not be able to say yes all the time, but if I can say yes, I'll say yes, and LinkedIn is the best place to find me to do that.

Speaker 1: 33:44

Are there any recordings of your previous speeches that people can find on YouTube? Or I think you don't think like that.

Speaker 2: 33:49

There are. I'm on LinkedIn and Logan Malory Speakscom is in the process of being built right this moment. I've been speaking informally but formally but informally, and it's time to redefine success in that part of my life as well.

Speaker 1: 34:08

Fantastic, fantastic. Thank you, logan, for everything you've been sharing, for everything you have shared, for your vulnerability and just opening up so that other entrepreneurs, other families know they're not alone, that the struggles they experience aren't unique to them.

Speaker 2: 34:24

They can do it. They can do it. Figure out the escape room you're in today and find the key and just work on that one, and you can do it.

Speaker 1: 34:32

Thank you. Thank you everyone. This has been a wonderful week. We will see you next time.